CARTERET ISLAND, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Reason to visit 

Rising sea levels are eating away at the Carteret Islands, and their inhabitants' way of life. Neil Tweedie and Roland Hancock spent a week learning about the world's first climate change refugees. Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true. According to the EPA, global sea level has risen by eight inches since 1870. This change is already affecting many low lying islands that have had to adapt. Some populations are moving to higher areas, or are trying to buy land from other countries to migrate its citizens, and some have even developed new ways of farming to protect their agriculture.

2007 estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change's most conservative estimates suggest that global sea level will reach increase 8 to 16 inches above 1990 levels by 2090. The National Academy of Sciences predictions from 2009 suggest that by 2100, sea level could increase by anywhere from 16 inches to 56 inches, depending how the Earth responds to changing climate.

The location

The location is too small and cannot seen through on map. It is in Papua New Guinea islands located 86 km (53 mi) north-east of Bougainville in the South Pacific. The atoll has a scattering of low-lying islands called Han, Jangain, Yesila, Yolasa and Piul, in a horseshoe shape stretching 30 km (19 mi) in north-south direction, with a total land area of 0.6 square kilometers and a maximum elevation of 1.5 m (5 ft) above sea level.

The group is made up of islands collectively named after the British navigator Philip Carteret, who was the first European to discover them, arriving in the sloop Swallow in 1767. As of 2005, about one thousand people live on the islands. Han is the most significant island, with the others being small islets around the lagoon. The main settlement is at Weteili on Han island. The island is near the edge of the large geologic formation called the Ontong Java Plateau.

Ways to get there

The only ways to get Carteret Island is with water transportation such as ship, boats and so on. The island are too small and does not have other transportation services on the island. It can be the one of the undeveloped place in the earth. 

Things to do 

We cannot found any place that have many activities to do as in the developed country. One of the reason we visit Carteret Island  is due to the undeveloped of the place and the people on the island are waiting for us to save them. These easy-going and peaceful people have lived on these islands for thousands of years. They have developed a strong culture with dances, music, games, local shell money, navigation, fishing,  and agriculture. They have interacted with their environment and each other in a sustainable and peaceful way. Their island is an integral part of who they are. We can enjoy the unpolluted air and beach at Carteret Island with the friendly islanders.